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Amiga Inc. announces new hardware

Amiga Inc. has finally come forward with an announcement of new PowerPC-based …

Amiga Inc., the company that purchased the rights to the Amiga line of computers back in 1999, has risen from its perpetual slumber to announce a new line of PowerPC-based computers that will run Amiga OS. The first machine will be a "consumer-level" system that will run at around $500, to be followed up with a more powerful system for $1,500. Manufacturing information, availability, and detailed specifications are promised to follow next week.

The hardware designs are the result of a partnership with ACK Software Controls, Inc., a company headed by Adam Kowalczyk. "I have been working on these designs with Amiga for almost 12 months and have been able to create two new designs that will fully support the needs and desires of today's Amiga user, while opening the doors for new users," Kowalczyk said in a statement.

While the announcement is welcomed by many Amiga fans—most of whom were getting extremely anxious at the lack of new hardware for the release version of OS 4—there are many in the community who remain skeptical. ACK is a relatively new company, and Kowalcyzk has made promises of new hardware before (such as the PowerVixen accelerator board for classic Amiga 1200 models) that have failed to materialize so far. Without solid release dates and specifications for the hardware, this latest announcement does little to quell these doubts.

The Amiga was a popular computer in the mid-80s and early 90s that could perform feats that seemed to come from computers ten years in the future, thanks to its custom graphics and sound chips and lightning-fast preemptive multitasking operating system. However, managerial incompetence at Commodore led the company to declare bankruptcy in 1994. Since then, there have been no less than 34 separate announcements involving the return of the Amiga, only one of which—the Eyetech AmigaOne motherboards running OS 4 written by Hyperion—ended up with the delivery of an actual, licensed, next-generation Amiga product.

Amiga Inc. suffered greatly from the dotcom bubble collapse of 2001 and lost most of their venture capital funding. The company has shown some signs of a comeback in recent years, signing deals including the purchase of the Indian software development firm Ruksun and the naming rights to a new event center in Kent, Washington.

Exactly what Amiga Inc. hopes to achieve in the future remains somewhat of a mystery, but it may revolve around the mobile market. OS 4 runs very quickly even on very low resources, and as such may find a niche on handhelds. The desktop version has so far been an attraction only for the most die-hard enthusiasts, but if a $500 system can be released it might pick up a few more of the once five million-strong classic Amiga user base, as well as curious onlookers—just as the Mac mini appealed to enthusiast "adders" looking for an inexpensive way to experiment with alternative platforms.